I worked in credit card dispute resolutions for a mid sized bank. Customers would complain about an unknown charge on their credit cards and it was my job to investigate and report back to them. This usually took about 30 days. I was at the behest of the credit card providers, not the bank's rules, hence the 30 day turn around time.

Our team was running smoothly until they appointed a new Team Leader and shunted our much beloved usual team leader sideways. This woman was a nightmare. She would hold weekly meetings and tell us all the new procedures that would be implemented, most of which ran contrary to the smooth operation of the team. She was clearly a corporate climber and had a nasty attitude to boot. She would always ask for questions or comments, but she'd trained everyone to be so scared of her reaction that nobody would put up their hands. At the end of the meetings, she would say, "Good work, Team. You're all STARS!!!!"

Upper management wanted to save costs, so they did a review of everyone's job. We were all on contracts so we were cheap fodder anyway. I liked my job until her underling/moron lackey/team leader wannabe was appointed to do an audit of my job. I tried to explain to him over many meetings why some months had a lot of disputes resolved and other months didn't. He JUST.DID.NOT.GET the concept that the disputes were clocked at 30 days from the day I received them, not 30 days from the 1st of each month.

Each meeting with him would find me getting frustrated constantly having to justify my work ethic (which is quite substantial) and him not understanding my plain English explanations.

In the end, it was decided that I wasn't good enough at my job and my contract wasn't renewed. I heard they ended up giving my job to a girl who was completely lazy and spent most of her time on the phone to her boyfriend. Meanwhile, my perfect turn around record was reduced to at least 280 disputes outstanding longer than 90 days! What happened then? The credit card providers ended up following their rules and denying anything older than 30 days and the bank wearing the costs of the dispute as they tried to keep their customers happy.

I went on to greener pastures and lived a happy corporate life. I ended up finding out from old work colleagues that the corporate climbing Team Leader lost her job in the downsize.
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It all started at the Company wide National Meeting in Orlando. Marketing Day- they gave us Sales Managers our Quota's for each drug our team sell.

The quota was arguably very high. Problem was the patient population that our drugs treat is not huge, its a small disease-not like, say, Hypertension. In fact if Everyone who had this disease used our drugs 100% of the time we still could not sell enough pills to meet quota.

So we were instructed on how to teach "Probing Skills" to our reps. To "Help and Lead" Physicians use our drugs on people its is not intended to treat. This was not the usual out of indication use that physicians do every day. It was expanded use with no clinical evidence or even medical history!

Many of us were not comfortable with this, of course, and asked our(boss) Director to clarify. So he brought us to a special meeting with his boss-the VP of Sales. He asked us the infamous question all managers have been asked "Are You On Board?" If your not with us.... He mentioned the high number of sales positions open that we could take instead of managing. That we should "think about that and try to refocus our energy on solutions not obstacles."

So I'm ashamed to say I "GOT ON Board". I spun the new "aggressive sales attitude" our company has adopted- to my team.
This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the new sales tactics we began using over the next 2 years.

I have since left that company and started my own business that is doing OK- but I sleep much better!
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...not exactly a corporation, but...
I worked for a small office furniture installation company for several years. Each year at Christmas, the owner would give us each a generous bonus. On the last year I worked with this company, Christmas crept closer and closer with no bonuses having been given out and no word of whether or not they were coming. The day before Christmas, the owner, who had recently returned from a long weekend in Las Vegas, announced to the company that no bonuses would be given out as it had been a "tough year for us". Some of my co-workers were crushed. Many of them had kids, for whom these bonuses were used to provide a nice Christmas. We're talking about some very blue-collar guys. When we returned to work after the holiday, we were greeted with the site of where our bonuses had really gone. The owner had parked his brand-new, top-of-the-line, 25 foot power boat in the warehouse. He, needless to say, was beeming ear to ear with enthusiasm. The productivity of the installation crews dropped off the charts. I have to say that I should thank him. That one act convinced me to go back to school and earn my degree. He closed the business 2 years later.
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Right out of college I was hired by an arrogant blow-hard of a boss. It was a small company... just him, me a part-time assistant and four freelancers. I had worked there for two years, getting regular paychecks -- everything was pretty normal. Then one day, the guy calls me into his office. It seemed that though he had been withholding taxes and Social Security from my wages, he wasn't actually sending that money in to the IRS. He had talked to his accountant and the scheme they worked out was to make me an independent contractor, retroactively to my start date. To do that, he needed his accountant to do my taxes.

I currently work for an enormous, multi-national electronics distributor. I guarantee we have a store in almost every town, and the company just opened up almost fifty new ones just like the one I work in. I've been there just over six months, and in that amount of time, I've been able to become one of the top sales people in my store. Last month alone I beat out two full-timers (i'm only part time, since I'm also a full-time student) one of whom had been in the company and in sales for YEARS longer than me. I beat her, I beat the other full timer and I finished at a very very narrow second to my manager.

We are restructuring our store and two positions came open that would've been a huge promotion for me. Basically I would've gone from being the youngest and least experieced (but most productive) sales member, to being an assitant manager.

I found out yesterday I was passed over for another member who is a preacher with two children and can only work three days a week. He and some dipsh!t from another store that MY GOOD SALES HELPED TO RUN OUT OF BUSINESS.

Also, the full timer I beat in sales, who is a horrible leader, gets to keep her job.
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